


A Study in Mourning

by bendingwind



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, Post Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-01-16
Updated: 2012-01-17
Packaged: 2017-10-29 16:03:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/321667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bendingwind/pseuds/bendingwind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three years is a long time. Long enough for a heart to mend and move on, if not forget. Set after The Reichenbach Fall, mild John/Sherlock.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part I

Three years is a long time. Long enough for a heart to mend and move on, if not forget.

That first night, he sleeps at their flat. He lays on the bed for hours and hours, replaying Sherlock’s fall in his head, the image of him on the pavement, all sky-blue eyes and red red blood. He never saw him hit the ground.

Some days he cannot stop himself from clinging to that. Those are the days he goes to see his therapist and allows her to lecture him sternly on acceptance and progress and moving on, and then he goes home and convinces himself that there could have been no mistake. He _saw_ Sherlock fall.

Other days it’s easy to accept. Time passes, and those days become more frequent, and he meets a very nice girl at work and they go on a couple of dates. It doesn’t work out in the end, but even when they break up he finds himself feeling lighter, more hopeful; there is life without Sherlock, after all. His therapist has all sorts of things to say about how he obviously never recovered from the war and developed a dangerous level of co-dependence with Sherlock as a coping mechanism.

He tells her that’s bullshit and finds a new therapist. He leaves that one too, and finds that he copes better on his own after all.

A year to the day, he visits Sherlock’s grave for the second time. He brings the skull with him and sets it atop the mound beneath the headstone, grassy now from spring rain.

“I miss you,” he says. “I say things to you and you aren’t there, and then I think that you must have felt like that all the time when I left you alone in the flat, only I don’t think you ever did, did you? You probably would have hardly noticed if it’d been me. You’d’ve just kept talking to me and your skull and Mrs Hudson.”

He laughs, a sharp sound in the quite cemetary.

“Hell, you could have kept my skull too. Harry’d probably have let you have it, she’s weird about things like death. You could have had a matched set, me and Yorrick, and talked to us all the time without the inconvenience of us talking back.”

The memory of Sherlock diving into a cab and relegating him to wait for another because _he might talk_ hits him hard and sharp, and he almost gasps.

“So... yeah. I miss you, more than you would ever have missed me. And... and I’m still waiting for that miracle, so, so hurry up, would you?”

He doesn’t stay longer than that. He picks up the skull, stumbles to his half-asleep feet and weaves his way between the scattered tombstones back to the road. That evening he gets roaring drunk and spends a night in a holding cell.

More time passes, and one day he’s at a Tesco looking for milk when he bumps into Molly. She’s shopping with her half-sister, who looks so unlike her that John mistakes her for a girlfriend. They exchange pleasantries that very carefully dance around the subject of Sherlock, and Molly’s sister Mary slips him her number.

Mary, widowed once in her early twenties, gives him advice that does more good than either therapist or a year of near-alcoholism: “Don’t be daft, you’ll never move on,” she says, rolling her eyes at him, “You have to learn to see the times before that as a gift, and not a loss.”

And so he thinks about the man he was when he came home from the war, with his limp and his cane and not a friend in the universe. He thinks of how lonely and slow the world seemed around him, before he met Sherlock. There isn’t, he thinks, a single thing he liked about the man except that he was there; he was there, when John had no one, and he was brilliant and mad and he was _there._

He moves out of the miserable shell of a flat he moved to after Sherlock, and he and Mary find a place together, a nice little flat in Camden, and they have a cat for about a week before it becomes apparent that he’s allergic. They give the cat to Molly and adopt a puppy, and he gets a promotion at work and finds himself in charge of half a dozen irritating men and women in their early twenties.

“So,” he says, as he sits at Sherlock’s grave two years to the day. “Still miss you, but I’ve mostly stopped talking to you. Oh, and a worker smashed your skull, sorry about that, I’d buy you a new one but... well. And I’m seeing Molly’s sister, Mary. You’d--well, you’d hate her, actually, but she’s pretty fantastic. I think if any of my girlfriends could have tolerated you, it would have been her. She used to read my blog, she told me once, she was a fan.

“I was thinking about asking her to marry me, but... she was married before, you’d know that if, well, and I don’t think she’s in a rush to marry again. Her husband died just a week after their wedding, freak accident, you’d probably know that too. So... yeah. I just wanted to let you know that, that I’m doing okay now. We’re okay. I didn’t think the world could keep on running without you, but... it has. So if you’re still working on that miracle, you know, I’m still waiting, but... if you’d rather not, that’s okay too. If you’re in, I don’t know, a better place. You can stay there, we’re fine here... everything’s fine.”

He doesn’t know what to say after that, so he stands and leaves.

He can almost swear that he sees a blue scarf out of the corner of his eye. Two years ago, even a year, he might have chased after it; this year, he smiles and shakes his head and climbs back into the cab waiting for him.

Time passes just as slowly now, but with more vibrancy. He and Mary mutually call it quits on their year-and-a-half anniversary. He moves out and Mary keeps the dog, because it really prefers her anyway. They remain good friends, and Molly as well, and Lestrade and quite a lot of the old crowd. Life is still the same in so many ways, and so different in others. When the public phone next to him rings on the street he no longer looks around for a sleek black car; instead he shakes his head and feels sorry for the bloke who got a fake number from a girl at a bar. He’s stopped running scans of the icebox twice a week to search for rotting flesh, and just accepts that there won’t be anything more than the food he himself put there. With the cessation of unexplained absences and a lack of a dark-haired menace lurking over his shoulder, his hospital career starts to take off, and he finds that he enjoys working with patients even if it’s not quite exciting enough.

His bad days no longer end with him drunk in a bar, trying to convince himself that miracles never happen. Now he’ll open one of the pages of his long-forgotten blog, and chuckle at a funny memory or wince at a particularly embarrassing story, and then smile. He gets in touch with a publisher who once approached him about a book, and finds that with a name change or two, the stories still sell. No one remembers Sherlock anymore, and _certainly_ no one remembers him, and he finds that he’s surprisingly good at twisting the stories and people just enough to make it seem like something brand new.

He makes enough money to move back to their old flat. He never did feel properly comfortable living anywhere else, and Mrs Hudson is more than thrilled to have him back.

Three years to the day, he visits the grave and brings his books with him. There are four so far, and another due in three months.

“Still helping me, eh?” he laughs, a warm sound in the sunlit cemetery. “Your stories still sell, even if you had to be an idiot bastard and let them all believe you were faking it. And I wanted to say... she was right, you know. Irene. Well, sort of. When she said we were a couple... I’ve never had a better friend than you, not in anyone, not ever. I don’t... I don’t like men that way, but that’s okay because you didn’t like anyone that way, did you? So, I just wanted to say... thank you, and I love you, and I’ll see you next year.”

This time, as he stands and jams his hands in his pockets and strolls back to his cab, there’s a smile on his face.

* * *

In a flat on Baker Street, a man in a trench coat and a deerstalker sits on a worn old sofa and waits for his friend to return. He has a miracle to perform, after all.


	2. Part II

From the window of the flat, Sherlock watches while John climbs out of the taxi. There’s a hint of his old limp that belies the smile on his face. He’s thinner, a little greyer around the edges, and he leaves faint muddy footprints on the walk in front of the building. His hands are in his pockets and there are faint grass stains on his knees, and a sort of sadness about his eyes.

He’s been at the cemetery, then. Of course. He moves away from the window, in case John should glance up, and settles on the couch. He feels a bit ridiculous in this get up, but frankly it’s a brilliant disguise. The deerstalker and greatcoat cover his face and body well enough, and anyone who saw him come in is likely to assume that he is merely another of John’s ardent fans. He waits as the key clicks in the lock and the heavy footfalls travel up the stairs. The flat is much as he left it, minus his skull--destroyed by a worker, John told him that, he remembers that--and far tidier than it ever was when he lived there. Gone are the beakers and test tubes and petri dishes, and the faint smell of decay has been replaced by a sort of dusty, quiet scent that is incredibly John.

Another key, and the lock on the door to the flat shifts, but doesn’t move. He left it unlocked for when John returned.

There is a pause, and then the door swings open. He finds himself staring down the barrel of a gun, which promptly drops.

“Hi,” John says, looking rather like a man who is either about to be hit by a train, or already has been.

His color’s good and his eyes are bright--and the refrigerator is full of vegetables and fruits and ridiculous, normal things. John’s on another health diet. The toes of his shoes are very slightly scuffed, but nice, and his clothes are more expensive than Sherlock remembers. He’s also renting this flat on his own. While Sherlock wouldn’t put it past Mrs Hudson to offer John a significant discount, he doubts John would accept; he’s making a tidy living from the novels, then. The bags under his eyes are less pronounced; he’s no longer drinking. A smudge of dried shaving cream by his ear, no noticeable dandruff flakes in his hair, so he’s showered within the last four hours.

He looks... well.

Sherlock tells him so.

“I’m sorry, I--are you a hallucination?” John’s still staring at him with that look that’s unique to him--equal parts disbelieving and utterly matter-of-fact.

“There’s a scuff mark directly to your left and an indent in the couch, details a hallucinating mind would be unlikely to create, which should prove I am not. In addition, I left the door unlocked.”

“I thought you might be a burglar.”

“Not Mycroft?” Sherlock asks.

“No. I haven’t seen him since your, your, your funeral. I’m sorry, are you _sure_ you’re not a hallucination?”

“I’ve already provided perfectly adequate evidence to the contrary,” Sherlock snaps, a little irritated now. He’s got a _case,_ and he really needs John to pay attention properly and get past this hallucination nonsense. “I--”

John doesn’t grant him the courtesy of finishing his sentence. “It’s just, I saw you jump. And I felt your pulse--you were definitely dead. I identified your corpse. And I watched, I watched them bury you. I’ve been visiting the grave.”

“I know, that’s all perfectly obvious from the grass stains on your knees and the dirt on your shoes. I’ve got a case--”

“You’re not dead.” It’s a statement of fact from John, and he almost breathes a sigh of relief.

“No, I’m not,” he replies, and his face softens as he perceives how very hurt John is.

“So you lied. How--never mind. You’ve been alive this whole time.”

“Well, obviously--” Sherlock begins. He’s interrupted again, this time by John’s fist in his face, followed by his small body barreling into his own, knocking them both to the floor.

“You--fucking--bastard!” John punches him ruthlessly, his eyes flashing with anger.

“John! John, _get off!”_ Sherlock retaliates, trying to scramble out from beneath him. “You asked me to come back! I--ow--I heard you! Stop _hitting_ me!”

John freezes, but if anything, Sherlock finds his expression, all shock and sorrow and pain, more disturbing than his anger.

“You were there?” John asks in a quiet voice. He sounds so lost. Sherlock swallows heavily and realizes that he’s somehow failed again with the emotions thing.

“I--yes?” he ventures, staring nervously up at John. He doesn’t sound like himself, he realizes. He doesn’t even feel like himself as he stares up at John and waits for... something.

“You’ve watched and let everyone who cared about you believe you were, were dead,” John says, still staring down at him with that unfathomable look.

“Well, not Molly of course, I required her assistance to switch the bodies, I--”

John is still sitting there, merely staring at him, and so he stops. John rolls off him.

“... not good?” Sherlock asks, after a moment.

“A bit not good,” John answers, falling so very easily into the old rhythms. He settles onto the floor by Sherlock’s side, his shoulder a warm presence against Sherlock’s own.

“Where did you go?” John asks, after a while.

“Can’t you--no, of course not, it’s been years, even I couldn’t deduce--I went to Irene. She’s good at playing dead, naturally, and she helped me for the first year or so. Then France, then a month in America, dreadful country, then Germany and Canada, worse, and... back to here. I always came back to London, every year, because I knew you’d... come to visit.” To his surprise, his story begins to spill out. “I had to, you see. Moriarty had arranged for you to be assassinated if I didn’t jump. I had to. You said... you said that friends protect each other, do you remember?”

“Yes. You came back?”

Sherlock fidgets nervously. Of course he came back, he always meant to come back. It had been impossible, life without John, horrible and boring and far too difficult. It is only just now occurring to him that perhaps John no longer wants _him_ back.

“Yes. You asked me for a miracle. Here I am.” He can hardly keep the tremor out of his voice.

John nudges him sharply with his elbow, and Sherlock can practically hear him scowl.

“And you’ve been alive this whole time?” John asks, repetitiously. Sherlock turns his head and gives John a look that he hopes conveys his full irritation at the question. _Obviously_ he’s been alive the entire time.

John turns his head to look at him as well, and for a moment Sherlock is startled by how close John’s eyes and nose and lips are to his own.

“You _bastard,”_ John says, with feeling. Sherlock can’t help the small smile that twitches at his lips. After a moment, John’s lips twitch as well, and suddenly they’re giggling in precisely the way they were once so accustomed to.

“Fuck you,” John adds, when they calm down, and then he rolls over again so that he’s hovering above Sherlock and slightly to his left. His eyes are soft as he leans down to press a kiss against Sherlock’s forehead, and Sherlock cannot bring himself to move.

“I missed you,” he says, and stands. “Tea?”

Mutely, Sherlock nods.

“John,” he says, very quietly. “I’m sorry.”

“Mmm,” John replies, and busies himself with the tea pot.


End file.
